Who Is Bastion From ‘X-Men '97’? - Origins

Photo from Entertainment Weekly

The first season of X-Men '97 was a majorly successful revival for the iconic mutants and it has won over the hearts of fans of the original series as well as new fans. It brought back many beloved heroes and villains from the original series but it also introduced a completely new villain that made his first major media debut from the pages of comics to the screens in people’s homes. That villain was Bastion who was revealed to be the true mastermind behind many of the heinous acts that occurred throughout the season. But understandably there were many people who had no clue who Bastion was prior to his appearance in this series. Who is Bastion exactly? Where did he really come from in comics? What makes him important for the future of the X-Men? Find out below!

Origin

As with most comic book characters there are multiple origins, identities, incarnations and adaptations of certain characters across comics and various media. For this overview we will be looking at the original comic origin of the character that began with his first appearance in 1996’s The Uncanny X-Men # 333. Bastion was introduced as a mysterious man named Sebastion Gilberti who had risen to power in a relatively short time in the U.S. Government and began assembling the international anti-mutant strike force Operation: Zero Tolerance (OZT). When the X-Men learned about the existence of OZT some months before the operation became public, Gambit and Phoenix, acting on information, snuck into an OZT meeting being held at the Pentagon to learn more about the program and its leader Bastion, but did not come out with much. Bastion showed that he was more than met the eye as Phoenix could not read his mind and Bastion easily identified the two X-Men hidden among representatives of various foreign intelligence agencies interested in supporting OZT. When Professor X voluntarily turned himself in after the Onslaught event, Bastion confined him in an OZT facility along with the artificially-created mutant Mannites, taking control of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. It also allowed Bastion to gain possession of the Xavier Protocols, a list of files containing information on killing the X-Men. Bastion also killed a Daily Bugle reporter named Nick Bandouveris, who was going to report on Graydon Creed's history and later Bastion himself succeeded in capturing Jubilee and taking her to the OZT base in New Mexico.

As the OZT attempted to reconfigure the Sentinel force assembled by Project: Wideawake, Bastion deemed most of them outdated. Instead, Bastion was able to develop a new type of Sentinel, the Prime Sentinels. Graydon's death was the last ammunition needed to initiate Bastion's OZT, which attacked mutants everywhere. The operation soon targeted and succeeded in capturing some members of the X-Men. Bastion also tried to buy off J. Jonah Jameson directly with all the available information he had managed to gather and decrypt on the outlaw X-Men and their associates. However, Jameson revealed that he had already been working on his own story for quite some time and invited Bastion to see what he had so far. When Bastion saw nothing, Jameson pointed out that Bastion had managed to ingratiate, intimidate, and dominate his way into a position of power in over a dozen countries. Yet there was no evidence of his existence. To Jameson, this meant the greatest story to follow was Bastion himself. He also implied that Bastion was behind the disappearance of Nick Bandouveris and this meant Bastion would kill to keep his secrets. Jameson then burned the data disk and ordered Bastion out of his office, warning that he would see Bastion charged with Nick's murder.

After learning the nature of the Prime Sentinels, the President was convinced by Senator Robert Kelly and Henry Peter Gyrich to suspend Bastion's operations. Bastion was captured by S.H.I.E.L.D., with help from Iceman. While in government custody, more mysteries surrounding Bastion were discovered, but before a further investigation could be made, he managed to escape and return to the home of his mother figure, Rose Gilberti. But after the authorities accidentally killed Rose, Bastion flew into a rage and returned to the former OZT facility. There he found Cable fighting Machine Man, who had lost touch with his humanity. Bastion made contact with the Master Mold unit that had created the Prime Sentinels, drained it of its energy, and transformed into a Nimrod unit. This transformation allowed Bastion's memories to be unblocked, revealing that he had not been born human at all, but started life as two separate beings: the Sentinel Master Mold, and the highly advanced Sentinel Nimrod from an alternate future. While posing as a human construction worker, Nimrod unearthed a module from Master Mold. As soon as Nimrod made physical contact with the module, Master Mold's programming began to co-opt Nimrod's. Shortly after, during a conflict with the X-Men, the two of them, along with the X-Man Rogue, were blasted through the Siege Perilous, a mystical crystal capable of judging anyone who passes through it and reincarnating them into a new life commensurate in quality with their previous life. The Siege Perilous was responsible for merging Nimrod and Master Mold into a single being with no memory of his past. Bastion was eventually found by Rose Gilberti who took him in and taught him human kindness. However, unbeknownst to him, when Bastion began to hear about America's mutant problem, his mutant-termination directives were re-activated. He abandoned Rose and sought out high-profile mutant critic Graydon Creed and his Friends Of Humanity.

After regaining its identity as a Sentinel, Bastion attempted to lead another crusade against mutants by turning Machine Man into a Sentinel Supreme, but Machine Man and Cable were able to defeat him. He was returned to government custody, only to be killed by Apocalypse's Horseman of Death. But like most comic book characters he would end up being resurrected and becoming a recurring villain for the X-Men and other mutant factions becoming more powerful and dangerous with every return.

Powers & Weaknesses

Bastion possesses numerous abilities as a cybernetic life form including various superhuman attributes such as superhuman strength, speed, durability, stamina and agility. And like all sentinels, he can assess the particular mutant abilities of his adversary and then modify his internal and external mechanism to compensate. Bastion was exposed to the modified strain of Techno-Organic Virus by the villain Mainspring. With it he gained the ability to transmute inorganic matter into techno-mechanical material that he had complete and total control over. He can also reanimate dead people by infecting them with the virus, as he did with several mutant-haters who formed his Human Council to aid in the extinction of the mutants. He can access the senses of those he infected with the virus, interfacing with their minds and thought processes. Everything they see he sees, and through this connection he can feed them necessary information or bestow them with computerized senses in order to utilize and assess strategic advantages. Additionally as the end result of the merger between Nimrod and Master Mold, Bastion gained power to command and control computer systems and Sentinels.

He also can reconfigure technological and mechanical objects, for example, use scrap metal and robotic parts to upgrade his body or reconfigure robotic bodies for himself by supplementing his head onto their chassis. He could even cast his will into any and every form of machinery or anything his virulent substance infects allowing him to even create other sentinels including the Prime Sentinels. With his constant ability to evolve he is able to gain even more abilities over time making him one of the most powerful techno organics in comics. No known weaknesses for him have been listed but he has been defeated before by various powerful mutants and his dependence on technology makes him vulnerable to anti-tech attacks especially ones from mutants specialized in destroying or damaging techno organics.

Debut in X-Men '97 Season 1 (SPOILERS AHEAD)

In the series, Bastion is introduced as the mastermind behind numerous villainous acts that occurred across the season with his true goal was to start a 300-year war that will lead to the enslavement of mutants in a human utopia of his own image. However, his origin in the series is slightly different compared to his origin in comics. It is revealed that in 1959, after the events of "One Man's Worth" from the original series, the surviving remains of the time-traveling Sentinel Nimrod previously thought to be destroyed by Bishop, instead possessed a college janitor, who would marry and conceive a child, a son named Sebastion Gilberti, who would inherit his father's techno-organic Sentinel genetics and would grow up corrupted by Nimrod and Master Mold's influence overtime, becoming Bastion.

In 1997, after Professor Charles X, the leader of the mutant superhero team, the X-Men, was seemingly assassinated by Henry Peter Gyrich, Bastion partnered with him and the mad scientist Mr. Sinister, the latter of whom collaborated with Bolivar Trask, in a plot to both create a new breed of human-like Sentinels named the "Prime Sentinels'' cause a war between mutants and humans, forming a secret faction in the UN called "Operation: Zero Tolerance" to carry out their plans. He likely had a hand in Sinister's creation of Madelyne Pryor and, by extension, her and Cyclops' son becoming Cable and had Trask transformed into a Prime Sentinel. Bastion would later send a Tri-Sentinel to the mutant nation of Genosha as it was being accepted into the United Nations, with it massacring thousands of mutants until it was destroyed by the X-Men member Gambit, resulting in his death in the process.

During the aftermath, Bastion abducted a presumed dead Magneto from the ruins of the country and imprisoned him in an abandoned barbershop. Gambit's grieving lover Rogue proceeded to go on a vengeful rampage across America in search of the Tri-Sentinel's master, eventually finding Gyrich in Mexico and looking through his mind in search for answers, resulting in him getting hospitalized. Bastion found his hospital room and suffocated him to death for almost giving away his plot. Afterwards, Bastion and Sinister would meet in a mysterious location where he revealed to him that Xavier had survived his seeming death and that mutants had been hiding this information from humanity, with him plotting to expose it in order to ruin mankind's trust in mutantkind and wage war against them. Bastion later unleashed the Prime Sentinels into the world, capturing and killing mutants until Magneto was released by a disillusioned Valerie Cooper, setting off a global electromagnetic pulse, shutting down the sentinels. He later created more Sentinels to fight the X-Men.

After capturing Beast, Morph, and Storm, Bastion taunted the three mutants, stating that OZT was in its final phase. However Jean Grey then rose from the water, becoming the Phoenix. She reassembled the collar and placed it on Bastion, shutting down his Sentinels. Despite this, Bastion was able to overpower and knock out the three mutants with a blast of energy, before destroying Cable's cybernetic arm and integrating the T-O virus into himself, transforming and growing wings. Bastion ranted that his cybernetic evolution of humanity was him trying to be merciful, but blocked from control of his Sentinel "family," he concedes that instead he will send Asteroid M crashing down onto Earth, to wipe out both mutants and humanity. Before he could make it there, he was intercepted by Rogue and Sunspot. He was sent crashing down to a moon, before overpowering them both and flying back to the asteroid. He then fought Nightcrawler, Cyclops, and Jubilee. They were able to hold him off until a Sentinel which was hijacked by Beast, Storm, and Jean crushed him. All the X-Men then prepared to fight him until Cyclops told the rest to stand down, not wanting to continue fighting Bastion. He then attempted to appeal to Bastion's human nature, but Bastion refused, admitting that humans and mutants are monsters. In response to the threat of the asteroid falling, President Kelly sent two missiles up to the asteroid to destroy it, however, the explosions only triggers its fall instead. As the X-Men started to scramble, Cyclops tried to convince Bastion to come with them, but Bastion refused again, mocking at their irrationality of them offering mercy to one who massacred thousands of their people. He was then presumed to be disintegrated by either the explosion or sucked in by the singularity, leaving it ambiguous on whether he is still alive or not.

Bastion’s Future?

Given that this is Bastion’s first appearance in major media and that he has been received positively by audiences there is a good chance we may be seeing more of him in the future. With the original animated series always having major villains returning in various episodes and Bastion’s ambiguous fate in the finale of X-Men '97 there is a huge chance he could return in the next season of the series or even future seasons depending on how far the series goes on for. There is also the possibility that he could one day be adapted in live action through the MCU as either a future foe of the MCU X-Men or even as an Avengers level threat given his immense power. There are numerous ways he could be brought into the MCU but given that he is a character that requires some significant build up before he can be included it may be a while before we could ever potentially see him on the big screen.